Mother Angelica does not preach from the pulpit, she simply teaches. Only men who have been ordained deacon (all bishops and priests are also deacons) may preach in the Catholic Church. Many women are teachers in the Church but none have been ordained to preach.
I think the more precise way of stating this is that women do not receive Holy Orders within the Catholic Church, and therefore do not give homilies during mass.
That said, there is a history of women deacons in the early Church (e.g., Phoebe the
diakonos of Cenchreae in Romans 16, the
ministrae in Pliny the Younger’s letter to Trajan), but their exact ministerial roles is unclear.
St. Clement of Alexandria writes of women who assisted the apostles in ministering at private homes, “by their agency the teaching of the Lord reached the women’s quarters without arousing suspicion.” St. Ignatius of Antioch referred to deaconesses as the “keepers of the holy gates.” He also writes of a company of consecrated virgins and an “order of widows.” The
Didiscalia Apolostorum (which did not have force of law) from the mid-3rd century also refers to a bishop at the head of a community which he governed with help mostly from deacons and deaconesses. It refers to deaconesses being for “the service of women.”
Later writings circumscribe the role of deaconesses more tightly. By 375, Epiphanius of Salamis writes, “there is certainly in the Church the order of deaconesses, but this does not exist to exercise the functions of a priest, nor are they to have any undertaking committed to them, but for the decency of the feminine sex at the time of baptism.” In the “Apostolic Constitutions” of 380, deaconesses are described as not having liturgical functions, but only to serve women. It mentions that a deaconess should do nothing without a deacon.
